Cars from the "Axis of Evil": North Korea

In this first installment of the series, we look at cars from the most forbidden country on Earth.

In 2002, President Bush listed several countries so dangerous and hostile to U.S. interests that he felt remiss in merely calling them assholes. Instead, he dubbed North Korea, Iraq, and Iran the “Axis of Evil.” A top diplomat expanded the list soon after to add Cuba, Libya, and Syria. But AOE countries don’t only build weapons of mass destruction, attack neighboring countries, or fund worldwide terrorism. They also build cars—or, at least, they try. Our first installment in a series on the bizarre cars made and driven in the most rotten countries on Earth focuses on one of the original evil-axis members, North Korea.

Thanks to the glory of communism, North Korea has what might be one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the world. Although the government doesn’t release official stats, the best estimate is that there are fewer than 30,000 vehicles on the road—in a country of nearly 24 million people. (Officially, private citizens can’t own cars, but those with government ties manage to.) You are more likely to know somebody with a private jet than a North Korean is to know somebody with a car. But that doesn’t mean the country’s few cars are boring. In addition to the standard-issue black S-class, North Korea has some of the wackiest cars on the planet.

Back in the ’80s, when the Soviets were still paying the bills, the North Korean government had enough electricity and food to waste its time on trying to show up the capitalist-pig South Koreans. When South Koreans built a tall building—because they actually needed the office space—the North Koreans built one taller (it sits unfinished and vacant to this day).

Kaengsaeng 88, Pyongyang, 1989. Photography by Meinrad Frhr. von Ow.

So when the South Koreans began designing and producing cars from scratch, the dictator Kim Il-sung ordered his minions to show that the North could build cars, too. Except they had no clue what they were doing. The North Korean automotive “engineers” imported several Mercedes 190Es and copied most of the parts with workmanship that made the Yugo look like a Rolls-Royce. The result was the Kaengsaeng 88. Allegedly, it had a four-cylinder engine, no heat, and no air conditioning, and the cabin was prone to fill with dust while driving. Kaengsaeng made several examples, and this one was spotted in the capital, Pyongyang, in 1989. It is possibly the only photo of this vehicle ever taken.

North Korea has since given up the knockoff Mercedes-Benz business; instead, it manufactures the finest counterfeit American money in the world.

In the ’70s, the North Korean government agreed to purchase 1000 Volvo 144s from Sweden, a country that likes to play the neutral card. The popular rumor is that Pyongyang never actually paid for them. The Volvos, however, are still puttering around the capital—mostly as taxis for the lucky few who are allowed to travel freely and who have the money to pay for them.

So where do the corrupt officials of a small Third World dictatorship do their car shopping? With the official brand of rich dictators worldwide: Mercedes-Benz. Photos of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, inevitably feature a ’70s or ’80s black S-class. One defector told South Korean newspapers that the higher the official, the higher up the model line. Back in the ’70s, this meant that a person with a 280SE was extremely powerful compared with the average citizen but at the lower end of the totem pole among government bigwigs. A 560SEL? Get the hell out of the way.

Pyeonghwa Motors billboard

Because the private sale of nearly everything is officially banned, North Korea doesn’t have much use for billboards—other than for cartoonish propaganda, of course. But the country is obsessive about putting on a good face, so much so that it maintains an idyllic fake village at the end of the South Korean border. It may well be that the purpose of the billboard for the Pyeonghwa Motors model Whistle is to advertise to the small group of foreign businessmen in North Korea, but it’s more likely they’ve set it up to dupe the locals into thinking the country is doing well enough for car ads. (It’s not.)

Pyeonghwa means “peace,” and Pyeonghwa Motors’ cars are built as a joint effort between a politically active South Korean church and a North Korean business owned by the government. The car pictured above is based on the old Fiat Siena, and the company also cobbles together several recognizable models from Chinese knockdown kits—think Erector set for cars.

Pyeonghwa cranks out an SUV and a crew-cab pickup as well, both of which look like the losers of a Chinese auto show.

The range topper is a googly-eyed “luxury” car based on the South Korean Ssangyong Chairman, itself a heavily face-lifted 20-year-old Mercedes E-class. Although it’s impossible to get any production statistics, North Korea expert Erik van Ingen Schenau estimates that Pyeonghwa makes roughly a thousand cars per year—meaning it’s more of a sales success than Saab is—and a few are exported to Vietnam for sale.

Although a minute segment of the population owns cars, the rate of growth is significant. In fact, in 2007, cars were deemed prevalent enough that Kim Jong-Il ordered the confiscation of all Japanese-built vehicles. Analysts at the time said it was the result of worsening relations between North Korea and Japan. That might well be true, but we take it as a sign that, despite our differences, Americans and North Koreans have at least one thing in common: We all want to get Camrys off the road.

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*AccuPayment estimates payments under various scenarios for budgeting and informational purposes only. AccuPayment does not state credit or lease terms that are available from a creditor or lessor, and AccuPayment is not an offer or promotion of a credit or lease transaction.